Storing digital audio or video information of reasonable quality requires a great deal of memory. For example, it would require approximately 64 million memory sites to store 15 minutes of audio sampled at a rate of 64 kbits/s. Audio of higher quality and/or longer duration would naturally require even greater amounts of memory, and naturally, the same would be true for video. However, the capacity and density of semiconductor memory devices, particularly ROMs, have increased dramatically in recent years. As a result, the storage of substantial quantities of digitized audio and video information within such devices has become feasible.
While present ROM architectures will support the storage of large quantities of digitized audio or video information upon a single integrated device or chip, there is an ever increasing need to minimize the physical size of the chip that provides the storage. This need to minimize the physical size of memory is seen to be most critical in the portable, personal audio/video player arena. Clearly, the consumers' preference for very small portable audio and/or video entertainment units is evident from the popularity of miniature stereo cassette players and televisions. It follows that if audio and/or video is to be stored within a solid state memory device for use in portable players, it would be advantageous to utilize a storage system that could provide a greater data storage density than that of currently available ROM devices.